Full of giblets

Governor Ahhnuld says he now understands what people who warned him that the budget would require hard choices meant. Oh sure, NOW he figures out how unqualified and unprepared he is.

Speaking of things it would be better to have planned in advance, The Daily Show suggested that Bush’s visit to Iraq might have some lessons for the war in Iraq. “For instance, when it comes to planning...do some. And lesson two of the Thanksgiving trip - when it comes to an exit strategy...have one.” Bush knew when he was leaving, and how he was leaving: by 2:00, and full of giblets.

Anyway, California. Though I’m pretty sure Arnie promised to fix the deficit entirely by opening the books and finding tens of billions of dollars of waste, or maybe two pages inadvertently stuck together, oddly enough there’s damned little talk of that now. He does however, want a mandatory spending cap, with extra powers for the governor to make budget cuts entirely on his own (which could be overturned by 2/3 of the Lege, but c’mon) if during the middle of a year the state starts running a deficit.

A Ha’aretz article looks at a government pamphlet on democracy, which fails to mention Palestinians, but does say that as a Jewish democratic state, which it defines by saying that Israel “accepts every Jew wherever he is and respects the values of
Jewish culture and heritage”. Something to remember the next time someone says that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

One reason the military tribunals haven’t begun is that the first group of defense lawyers recruited by the Pentagon balked at the ground-rules, and were promptly fired.

From his jail cell in the Hague, Milosevic will run for the Serb parliament. He can do that because he hasn’t been convicted yet, because it’s only, what, the 3rd year of his trial, 8th year? 73rd year?

And Prince Alexander II wants to see monarchy restored. The prince was born in 1945, the year the monarchy was abolished. He was born in Claridge’s hotel in London. Problem was that a Yugoslav monarch had to be born on Yugoslav soil, so Churchill declared suite 212 of Claridge’s to be Yugoslav territory. No word on whether it still is.

The Thai prime minister plans to ban MPs from his party having mistresses or going to brothels. There is a mass revolt. The party’s name is Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais).

The new head of Australia’s Labor Party is a man who called Bush “the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory” and John Howard an “arse licker,” and once broke a taxi driver’s arm in a dispute over what was the fastest route.

NY Times: “The federal official who runs Medicare and was intimately involved in drafting legislation to overhaul the program is the object of a bidding war among five firms hoping to hire him to advise clients affected by the measure.” Thomas Scully got an ethics waiver from the DHS (or is that an ethics bypass?).

A French scientist withdrew his life savings from the bank, about $1/4 million, set it on fire, then tried to commit suicide by taking pills. Unfortunately, his neighbors saw the smoke, called the fire department, and now he is alive and broke.